re: For True Crime Junkies, what's your favorite cold case?

Killing of Judy Smith

Brief rundown:

quote:

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Dental records and the arthritic knee soon led the body to be identified as that of Judy Smith (born Judith Eldredge; December 15, 1946, in Hyannis, Massachusetts), a 50-year-old nurse from Newton, Massachusetts, who had last been positively seen alive by her husband Jeffrey at a hotel in Philadelphia almost five months earlier. When she had not shown up after a day purportedly spent sightseeing in the city, he had reported her missing. Until the bones were found, the search for her had been concentrated in the Philadelphia area, where several sightings had been reported, although some of them may have been of a homeless woman who strongly resembled Smith.[2]

The investigation into the killing has been complicated by the unresolved question of how Smith got to North Carolina from Philadelphia, 600 miles (970 km) away, in the first place.[1] She and her husband planned to stay in the Philadelphia area and visit friends after the conference he was attending ended; she had not expressed any desire to visit the Asheville area where her body was found. Yet when found she was wearing clothes more appropriate for hiking than those she had on when last seen in Philadelphia. It has been speculated that she might have been a victim of serial killer Gary Michael Hilton, who had left one of his victims in a similar condition near where Smith's body was discovered.

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Supposedly, she was involved with horses in her younger days. I believe horse racing/breeding is a high dollar industry. This is an angle I've never seen talked about publicly with this case but it's one that I think makes sense.